


A Better Resurrection

by onedogtown



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 13:32:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12300165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/pseuds/onedogtown
Summary: Each bird must have its nest.





	A Better Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialskiff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/gifts).



The following summer was one of the most beautiful of my life, and I spent almost none of it outside the little, out-of-the-way room Helen had been given to convalesce in. What cared I for the glories of nature, or for the learned medical opinions of the doctor who departed with the same grave look still upon his face? The crisis was over, my dread proved foundationless, and Helen was returned to me. The season, I can truthfully record, passed without my seeing a single cloud. 

Helen’s situation eased very gradually, and her strength was regained only by increments. I felt strongly that I should be the one to nurse her, though I had never been nursed in my life, and had little idea of what I would have provided her with besides my company. The fleet of nurses was not so overextended that a child was likely to be pressed into service, and so I was thwarted in that wish, and had to content myself with becoming a nuisance; that I was not thrown out of the sickroom at all was because Miss Temple, who loved Helen as well as I did, was sympathetic to my viewpoint. 

Helen bore her trial very patiently, but then it suited her to resign herself to trials. She spoke very little, smiled at my antics more often than she used to, and liked to hear me read from the Bible. It must have been very strange for her: she had not minded death—indeed, she had learned to welcome it, for the sake of seeing her God and her mother. And now she had to put aside thoughts of rest, and endeavor to take up again those earthly cares which she had so gratefully put down. Her view of herself and her future prospects, as she had portrayed them to me, were very modest, though I admired her too much to believe that she could ever be truly at fault except in the mind of one set against her. I used to sit beside her bed when she was too tired to listen to my reading, and imagine myself protecting her from the suffering she had described to me.

It was a great relief to both of us when she was allowed out of doors again, though the long expedition downstairs tired her extremely. I brought a blanket with us, and Helen lay upon it to rest, looking very long and white, with a wet handkerchief over her face, and her hair braided as neatly as I could make it. Beside her I read aloud from one of the long books lent to her by Miss Temple, and required my companion’s assistance with some of the words. 

None of the years that followed proved interesting enough to make a narrative out of. Helen had improved enough by autumn to rejoin me in the classroom: once the general scapegoats for Miss Scratcherd and her ilk, we came to be known as the school’s ornaments. Helen was often made use of as a model student displayed to visitors—an honor which thrilled me deeply, and which she gently deprecated. 

By then we were usually spoken of in the same breath. This was the exception at Lowood, not the rule; the other friendships I formed in those years were comradely but shallow, forgotten as soon as the circumstances around us shifted. There was no permanence, no attempts at deeper bonds, though we were most of us orphans. Helen of course was not, and yet she was as alone as I was—I mean a different kind of loneliness than that of the body, that is eased by trust and comfort, instead of by the presence of a hundred other strangers in close quarters. 

We stayed at Lowood through the years of our schooling, and then on to teach, since Miss Temple provided posts for us: we might have stayed there for years after, since the situation had proved so convenient, but for two events. The first was Miss Temple’s marriage, to a man of great excellency of character, which I should have greeted with great joy on her behalf, as Helen did: when I wept, however, I found myself thinking of evil bridegrooms in fairy-stories, and almost could not bear to watch the new Mrs. Nasmyth step into her carriage. 

Helen was my solace in this—Helen, so mild in her manner, and with her soul formed all of leather and iron. It was Helen who I depended on, who I argued with to hear the comfort of her sweet reply, and whose thin form I reached for in the dark, when childish fears overwhelmed me. I depended upon her, as I had never been able to upon my own blood relations, either the Reeds or my own mother and father long-lost. And Helen became sick—Helen, who had not been truly ill for years, was close to dying.

I was allowed to nurse Helen myself, as I had not been allowed eight years earlier, and I guarded my charge jealously. Helen bore up like a Stoic, as well she might, since she was so certain of either outcome. It was my duty to cheat Father Death, and I had to be as fierce in my offices as a tiger—all the while knowing that there was only so much that fear and dogged wakefulness could accomplish. 

All I could do for her was to pray with numbed lips, and to watch her as closely as I could, for fear that she would slip away without my seeing. She lived, though I could do little enough for her: when I saw her beginning to breathe easily again I could hardly hide my tears.

Afterwards she remained weak: she could not stand long, and would perhaps never be able to teach again. In the unsympathetic eyes of the trustees, there was no place for her. I might have paid for her board, having little else to spend my small salary on, but then she would still have taken up the space which might go to her replacement. She had a father living; why, then, should Lowood bear the burden? So ran the verdict of that Christian institution.

Helen, left to herself, would have gone to that unloving place calmly, as she was bid, and never think to entertain resentment against any of us who had left her there. The thought was intolerable to me. I was sure that, left in the bosom of her family, she would die, so as to avoid being a burden to any of them. It was not a possibility to be thought of. 

If Helen did not return to Deepden, and could not stay at the institution, then her care would fall to me. The task I welcomed, but I was left with a quandary: I was well-suited for the position of a governess, which would pay well enough to support two, but no employer would take me along with a dependent. Perplexed, I wrote to the former Miss Temple seeking assistance, and it was she who contrived a solution.

It seemed that Mrs. Nasmyth was acquainted with a former student as the institution, one Anna Larkin, now living in Edinburgh. Her business, which was giving lessons in drawing, French, piano, etc. in private homes, had proved so successful that she was willing to take me on and expand it, since Mrs. Nasmyth had vouched for my proficiency in all these subjects. I would go ahead by a fortnight, to be sure of the position and to find a suitable place for our board, and Helen would follow after. 

Neither of the good women advising me stinting on the job’s difficulties. In their description, it took all the disadvantages of life at Lowood, and stripped out all the advantages. The work was wearying and dull, the travel from house to house tiring, the children spoiled and disinclined to work, and the parents invariably finding that the fault lay with the instructor, not the pupil.

Helen I was not; no matter how long we had known each other, I had never acquired the satisfaction she found in testing her character. The days of my new life would be very trying, and I would have to learn to accustom myself.

None of it dissuaded me: what I wanted was not the days, but the nights, after the drudgery had ended, and I would find her in our home, comfortably tucked into our shared bed. It was good to think of her there, living a life of quiet and ease, as she deserved. Other women, I have read, buy lives together with less difficulty, but neither Helen or I had families of stature, or with inclination to give us support if they had been able to. The joined life, the shared world in the confines of a rented room, we had earned ourselves, and would be beholden in it to no headmistress or board of trustees. The sweetness to my mind more than balanced out the sting. 

Helen I thought would try to martyr herself in the false belief that it was for my benefit; in anticipation I had memorized some arguments, very grounded and religious in their theme, which I thought that she might appreciate, but when I told her my plan she only reached for my hand and held it. After a moment she said, “Can you forgive me? To be such a burden—but I am so glad that I am to remain with you, Jane; gladder than I could have imagined.”

To the first part I answered something along the lines of “No cause, no cause,” only less comprehensible; to the second part I could do nothing except kiss her, feeling almost overwhelmed by her presence, and by my own luck in having her by my side. I was happy to be with her, to feel her arms around me and her hand in my hair, no matter the cost or the duration; whatever else we were, we would not be parted.


End file.
